Page 6 - Brokenclaw - John Gardner

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DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

The elderly man wore jeans and a checked shirt. Comfortable Adidas trainers
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protected his feet and a battered Panama hat was tipped forward to shade his
eyes from the afternoon sun. He stretched out in his deck chair, lowered the

newspaper he had been reading and looked out at the view which he had come
to love.
This, he considered, could well be an English country garden in mid-
summer. The long, broad lawn was precisely cut, giving that pleasing trompe

l’oeil effect of broad, perfect stripes in two shades of green. The borders were
slashed with crimson salvias, overshadowed by deep purple lupins and
nodding hollyhocks. Some sixty yards away from where the man sat, the lawn
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ended, merging into a rose garden built with a series of trellised archways,

giving the effect of a great corridor of colour. In the far distance there were
trees, and through a gap you could clearly view the sea stippled with points of
sunlight.
The man was only vaguely aware of the sound of a car drawing up outside

the house behind him. This was the complete illusion, he thought. Anybody
could be forgiven for imagining they were in a summer garden in Surrey or
Kent. Only the date on his copy of the Times Columnist assured him it was
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September 25th and he was sitting only a few miles from the city of Victoria on
Vancouver Island in British Columbia where, because of its mild climate
warmed by the Japanese current, vegetation blooms all the year round.
The main doorbell of the house pierced his pleasant reverie. The maid was
away for the day, shopping in downtown Victoria, so he rose, dropping his

newspaper, and ambled slowly into the house, grumbling to himself.

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